It's been a while since my last Adult Swim games. Monster Ate My Condo and Major Mayhem are two my favorite games coming from this developer at that time. Castle Doombad has been out a while in the jungle, but after they decided to change the strategy into a free2play game, I jump into the game right away, a decision that I never regret to choose.

Castle Doombad is more or less a castle defense, where you as the bad guy have to defense your castle so that the 'good guy' won't be able to save the 'princess'. You will have to defeat every wave of heroes by laying down traps, cannons, or summon minions to help you finish all the heroes.

There are three categories that will specify Castle Doombad weapons. Auto Trap, Minions, and Manual Trap. Auto Trap will act like tower in usual TD mechanic where it will do damage automatically with some interval based on their cooldown speed. Minions will be like your pawn where it can battle the heroes on their way through their mission. Manual Trap will be like usual tower, but the trap have to be tapped in order to trigger the trap ability. There are more than 20 weapons available that will vary the way you will play.

Things I Like

The game never disappoint me in any level inside the game. While I’ve almost finished the whole chapter in the game, I still nowhere near bored playing the game. The various characters that was developed in this game also add excitement. From the Dr. Lord Evilstein as the main evil actor in this game, the ninja, the Galaxy Soldier, even Superman that can fly through the castle, and also the tanker that loves to take selfie of themselves. All this characters kept me smiling while I busy putting the trap in the game.

The developer also kindly enough to give us a free update. A new chapter that introduced the second princess (Beach Princess) also give us extra challenge while playing this game.

The challenge are also adding extra spices in the game. One of the challenge that I couldn’t forget is to bully the heroes, “Don’t kill the heroes for 3 minutes”. It means you have to somehow smart enough to make the heroes running around in the castle and not killing them.

Also don’t forget about the giant list of the traps, with the description in it. Like Pirate Cannon with a description “TAP TO ARM, AND TAKE OUT AN ENTIRE FLOOR, YAAARRR!”. Or Lil’ Minion’s description “ZIPS ALONG THROUGH THE CASTLE… SHOCK-TASTIC!”. All of this attention of details makes this game one of my favourite game ever.

Tips

There are some tips that I found useful to make the princess untouchable.

Put your scream generator in the unwanted place. Make sure scream generator placed where the heroes would not bother to come to. This means however that in each wave the place of the scream generator won’t be the same. This is to ensure the heroes won’t be destroying the scream generator and at the same time, can clear enough space to put traps in strategic places.

Lay down scream generator ASAP. As soon as the waves started, make sure that the scream generator placed. You will need mostly 2 scream generators on each round. You might need less, but effectively, 2 scream generators will generate scream faster and you will be able to build trap faster. Too many scream generators however, will ruin your castle stability.

Fully upgrade your scream generator. This trap is the one that if you have some doom shekel, need to be upgraded first. Since after fully upgraded, each scream generator will cost you only 50 screams and will generate scream even faster. It will also give chance to shock the attacker if the generator is attacked.

Consider before fully upgrade weapon. If scream generator has to be fully upgraded, there are some other weapons that you need to consider before fully upgrade or even unlock it. Traps like The Zapper or Harpoon Cannon are one of those weapons that you don’t need to fully upgrade as the full version are not give that many effects. But, if you have plenty doom shekel, you might want to fully upgrade your weapon as it will give some slight visual changes for the weapon.

Identify the routes that heroes will take. Plan your defense as close as possible to the princess. This will help to focus your attention when there are several paths leading to your princess.

Wall trap, Ceiling, and Floor trap works together. You can combine this 3 traps in a one zone. So for example, you can put together Floor Spikes, Overactive A/C, and Buzzsaw in one places. So it will deal a great damage while the heroes were slowed by the A/C.

Lil' minion is the best. Yep, Lil’ Minion is one trap that I kept using until the end of the game. Besides blocking the heroes, Lil’ Minion can also kill it with its Fire mode. Please note that all minions are limited to only 3 (all type of minions) per floor.

In the crucial floors, always put as many Lil' Minions as possible. They're very good in fighting ninjas, archers, trap dismantlers, and superman. Keep their numbers in check and refill them whenever you can.

Put Overactive A/C along the ladder's path. This will slow the movement of the heroes when climbing up the ladder. You can also put some ceiling trap like Acid Dripper or Stomper to gain advantage when a group of heroes coming together.

Fireball Cannon and Overactive A/C. This two type of traps are overriding each other effects. While A/C slow the heroes, Fireball override the slow effect and change it to burn effect. Hence, the slow movement will be gone and the movement will go back to normal speed.

Poison and Slow Effect. The override effect I mention on the previous tips however, will be ignored by poison-slow combination. It means that when the heroes poisoned, it can still be slowed by A/C traps. You can take this tips into consideration when choosing the trap.

Use a Decoy Princess to stall some time while setting up your defenses. Find a spot that's farthest away from your "real" princess.

If you're able to reroute heroes to chase after a decoy princess, make sure you put the painful freezing combo of Overactive A/C, Buzzsaw, and Floor Spikes in the routes that will be traveled by the heroes on the way in and out.

Fatty Troll. If you have two princesses in play, always balance your defense in both paths. Use the Fatty Troll to momentarily block one of the paths, if you have to.

Retry, Retry, and Retry. Every round in Castle Doombad is all about good combination of traps and placement. So once you know this combination, you can always use the same combination to retry the level to gain more doom-shekel. Just find a rather short round that has great reward and use that round to mine some shekel.

My Favorite Combination. My most useful combination in one zone is Floor Spikes, Overactive A/C, and Buzzsaw in one zone. Then in front of it, I put Fatty Troll and Da Boot. As the finisher, I use Lil’ Minion and Harpoon Cannon to kill the heroes. With this combination I can create a huge wall in front of it while dealing enough damage to the heroes. What’s your combination? Put it on the comment below.

Conclusion

While most TD games have tried to evolve themselves with graphics improvement, Castle Doombad lay it low with cute graphics but packs a punch in its game design. If you’re a TD fan like me, it’s a game that you have to play.